The skies over MX-1 blaze with war.

Armored drop ships thunder into the atmosphere amid a storm of flak bursts and enemy disruptor bolts streaking past on all sides.

Their ablative heat-shielding burns across a smoke-blackened sky as hyper-sonic escorts strafe spiraling Nek'var fighters with sweeping blasts of their pulse cannons.

Occasionally, one vanishes in a boiling explosion of disrupter fire and expanding debris.

They streak for the war-torn surface of MX-01, Humanity's besieged interstellar colony.

A once radiant moon of glittering cityscapes, towering into the sky.

From orbit, sapphire oceans sparkle in the warm rays of the sun, and lush forests stretch to the horizons where hazy, white-capped mountains, sketch a dark outline across the sky.

Indeed, a world untouched by the hand of war until the Nek'var invasion scorched her surface into an apocalyptic ruin.

A blackened, hellish landscape of intersecting craters, raining embers, and smoldering structures that crush all life from the planet. A crystal-pure dream turned nightmare where Humanity's desperate forces defend the Sol transwarp gateway from a relentless Nek'var assault.

If they fail here, the Nek'var Empire will flood into the heart of Humanity with an unstoppable army of darkness.

Nek'var forces have besieged Ellis Forward Operating Base - the last remaining human stronghold, and there is heavy fighting in the streets.

A fleet from Sol arrives with reinforcements who are rapidly deployed to the outskirts of the western perimeter with orders to push east and hold the base—no matter the cost.

Among these reinforcements, is a new breed of soldier.

A power-armored soldier.

A devastating warrior out of science fiction, now a fearsome reality. But resources are limited, and the new armor has yet to be tested in the field.

Will this fusion of man and machine prove to be the long sought after key to machines as an extension of mankind's own feeble form? Or will they, too, fall to the Nek'var onslaught?

The battle for MX-01 starts now.

---

"Hold on tight to yer panties, boys!" Warrant Officer Lu Xiajun called over the dropship's comm in a voice gone tight with concentration. "It's gonna get a little rough."

Energy-scatter from anti-aircraft bursts slammed into the dropship and rocked the armored soldiers around in their jump-bay. Shrapnel clanged and scraped along the ship's outer skin like a thousand little gongs.

Erik clenched his jaw tightly and began to inhale deeply through his nose.

"What do you guys think it's like down there?" Private Jethro 'Doc' Wiley asked Corporal Erik Shields from across the drop bay, then anxiously glanced at Private Stolley sitting next to him. "I bet it's bad. It sounds horrible."

The dropship rocked violently with a near hit, shaking them in their armor docking stations.

Private Wiley was their resident medic, a former MD convicted of performing Nano-surgery on a patient while drunk. The Judge must have been feeling generous that day because she offered him a choice, prison, or enlistment.

Erik only half-heard him. He was busy concentrating on his meditative breathing and trying to calm the pounding in his chest.

"Thirty seconds to drop," Warrant Officer Lu Xiajun cut in over the comm. "Standby ready."

When Erik finally answered, his voice was cold and controlled, revealing nothing of the fear and anxiety boiling under the surface.

"I dunno, Doc," Erik replied, his face a cold mask of indifference, glancing at the far end of the drop bay where the pilot's cabin was situated. "I am curious about this new Gunnery Sergeant, though."

Private Wiley paled further but didn't speak, just fiddled with his armor.

Stolley, who sat rocking with his eyes closed, praying, didn't respond at all.

Erik's frown deepened.

The man had been acting strange since he was born again, and Erik found it hard to trust anyone that didn't speak. He noted a bead of sweat trickling down Stolley's face and chuckled silently. Faith must still be a work in progress.

The drop lights began to flash crimson.

"Ten seconds," the pilot's voice came again. "Ready line."

Erik tapped a couple of touch keys on his docking station, and his armored helmet descended into place with an electronic snikt!, and a slight hiss of air, while its holographic HUD glowed to life.

He disengaged from the armor docking station and turned to face the drop bay door as the ship's groaning hydraulics finished absorbing the impact of touchdown.

Erik stepped forward, unclipped his pulse rifle from a rack near the door, snapped it into place on his back, and waited for the rest of his platoon to follow suit.

"Good luck out there," Lu Xiajun's digitized basso sounded within their helmets, his voice suddenly very serious. "I expect to be picking every one of you up when this is all over."

Erik's helmet nodded in the direction of the pilot's cabin, and he keyed the drop bay door.

"Take care of yourself, sir," Erik responded, before switching his band to delta prime. The drop bay door swung up with a hiss, and a telescoping ramp extended toward the ground through a swirl of atmospheric vapor.

A towering shape loomed out of the gloom.

"Welcome to hell, people."

An armored figure sporting the stripes of a Gunnery Sergeant stepped forward and greeted Erik's platoon over the high-pitched shriek of their drop ship's anti-grav engines.

They double-timed it down the ramp through a storm of flashing tracer rounds, and blinding-white explosions that lit up the night.

"I am Gunnery Sergeant Moore, your new platoon Sergeant," his digitized voice resonated calmly over the comm despite the chaos surging all around them. "Our orders are to push east across the base, eliminating all opposition we encounter along the way, then reinforce Lieutenant Dree at the intelligence command center, directly."

Erik stared at the Gunnery Sergeant in astonishment.

He couldn't believe that he'd just been waiting for them by himself out in the middle of this warzone. It was impressive, to say the least. Five red pips glowing on the man's helmet caught Erik's eye, and it all made sense. Twenty-five-years of soldiering would forge even the softest man into a hardened instrument of death.

Maybe I'm not a coward, after all, he mused. Gunny is just bat shit crazy. Then he silently laughed at such a feeble attempt at self-delusion. He was fucking terrified.

"I know this is your first drop, and some of you believe it's unfair that you are here," the Gunny continued, explosions rumbling in the distance, and fast attack fighters shrieking past overhead. "You're supposed to start at the rear of the lines and rotate up—yet here you are, in the shit. We've all heard the stats—it's in the genetics. Most aren't born wired for the new armor. Just we lucky few."

He looked around at them, and his tremendous armored shoulders rose slightly, almost apologetically. Erik remembered the battery of tests necessary for entry into the recently established Armor Corps, and the Gunnery Sergeant was correct. Out of a starting class of five-hundred, only five were capable of using the armor in a sufficiently reasonable manner to be combat effective.

He could still see their stricken faces when they were told that genetics had crushed their dreams of armored greatness.

"You've trained for this. You're equipped for this," Gunnery Sergeant Moore went on, undeterred by the dropship roaring into the sky. "You know what to do. Watch your six, and each other's, and you will come through this."

He fixed his flat-black faceplate onto each of them in turn.

"I have only one standing order—don't get yourself," he barked gruffly, holding up an armored fist. "Or your squadmates killed, questions?"

Gunnery Sergeant Moore disengaged his pulse rifle from its mounting bracket on his back and coupled it to his arm's keeper clip.

"Ok then, single-file formation. Flank teams on both sides—on the double," he looked to Erik as he gestured into the distance. "You've got the lead Corporal, expect resistance. Now let's go, MOVE OUT!"

A staccato of explosions, pulse rifle chatter, and booming artillery rounds wove into a discordant symphony of war. Erik heard the Gunny's words, but still, he froze, pulse rifle in hand, stunned by the smoke, fire, and death that assaulted his senses.

Six months of Fleet training simulations hadn't adequately prepared him for the sight of burning flesh, scattered entrails, and deadly tracer fire, amplified by the horror of mangled bodies strewn all about, some still smoking with explosive afterglow.

Erik wasn't the only one.

"You guys smell that shit?" Bracken gagged. "I can't believe my armor isn't filtering that out. I'll be too busy puking to fight!"

Specialist Ito snorted out a laugh, a blast of white noise in Erik's ears.

"I don't smell anything," she said, her voice bubbling with amusement. "Didn't you activate your environmental controls?"

"It ain't automatic?"

"No," She replied, struggling to suppress another wave of laughter. "The default setting just pulls unfiltered air into your suit."

"Oh."

'Bracken, you dumb shit."

"What? Fuck you, Rivers!" Bracken shot back. "Like you knew?"

"Well, I ain't gagging, am I?"

"Just shut up..."

"There are three settings," Sara went on. "Fresh, unfiltered, filtered, and your suits reserve air supply, which incidentally, can be replenished with the other two."

"You taking notes, Slacken Bracken?"

"Rivers, I swear to God, man."

"The suits system is not going to filter unless you tell it too," Sara finished her lecture with a good-natured slap on the back. "You really need to pay better attention in briefings, Slacken Bracken."

"Yea, Slacken..."

Bracken ignored Rivers' last comment and worked a few keys on his forearm to get the filters going and breathed in deeply.

"Wow, so much better."

"Better'n what?" Rivers feigned confusion. "Yer boyfriends cologne?"

"Rivers, I'm gonna kick your ass!"

"Bring it."

Erik barely heard the rest of the exchange. The raw scene of carnage was staggering, nauseating.

"Well?!" The Gunnery Sergeant's voice burned a hole through Erik, and he could practically hear the man's neck veins bulging out. "What are you waiting for, sweetheart?! A written invitation? MOVE YOUR SQUAD OUT!"

Erik registered the Gunnery Sergeant's anger from some distant corner of his mind as if it were being filtered through a slow-motion lens. He willed his stubborn legs to comply, but his treacherous limbs betrayed him, feet firmly rooted to the pavement.

A group of soldiers pounded past where Erik stood frozen next to the Gunnery Sergeant and vanished into a drifting cloud of smoke, which hung heavy over the base, obscuring his line of sight, lending a nightmarish quality to the darkened streets.

It was as if Erik were a spectator in his own mind watching it on a thin film. He broke out in a cold sweat. And the stomach-churning promise of a gruesome death closed its icy grasp around his heart.

During the pre-drop briefing on the battlecruiser HSS Bulwark, they were mobilized and attached to the 1st Defense Battalion, Delta Company, Ellis forward operating base, as third-line auxiliaries, per Colonel Wen's orders.

All new recruits were supposed to be deployed to the rear of the forward lines and rotated forward as they gained combat experience. This ensured that your most experienced, battle-hardened soldiers remained on the front lines at all times.

Statistics showed a marked improvement in overall combat effectiveness, and a significant decrease in casualty rates, using this method. It allowed the raw recruits to psychologically harden themselves to the brutal rigors of war while gaining valuable combat experience assisting their veteran peers, albeit at a safer distance.

Dropping a platoon of green-boots into the front line meat-grinder of an active warzone served only to increase casualty rates, compromise your veteran troops, and rob you of your next generation of combat-capable soldiers. In short, if this were a professional sports team, they would be the third-string rookie reserves never meant to see the field their first season.

But things have changed, haven't they? A new kind of enemy, a new type of war. An Armor Corps whose rulebook hadn't even been written yet.

Desperate times...

"MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!" The steely-eyed Gunnery Sergeant seized hold of Erik's armor and slammed an armored palm against his helmet, breaking the ethereal shock that gripped Erik's mind with a second, more forceful crack and a shove that staggered him forward a step. "I said move your ass, god damn it! Don't just stand there playing grab ass, Corporal. You want to get everyone killed?!"

Erik waded back from the depths of despair that imprisoned his mind and glanced over at Gunnery Sergeant Moore. The man was the embodiment of unbridled intensity and yet, maintained an aura of calm confidence bolstered by a lifetime of experience.

His matte black nameplate, stamped on the right side of the armor's chest, next to his rank-plate, confirmed the salty veteran's identity as Gunnery Sergeant Moore in camo green letters.

"Acknowledged, Gunny," Erik managed to rasp out of his desert-dry throat, a flood of shame flushing his face. "Moving out."

Erik gave the hand signal to move, and started forward, trotting off toward a pulsing arrow in the distance with a tremendous powered stride that kicked up chunks of asphalt from the tarmac.

He quickly accelerated to top speed, his armored boots pounding divots into the pavement.

Tracer rounds flashed on all sides, and the orange-white bursts of plasma tipped artillery rounds pulsed behind thick curtains of smoke.

The landscape around him appeared to jump and repeatedly skip like a stuttering motion picture, and buildings and signs moved in jerky, robotic motions, vying to disorient him in the broken darkness.

"Contact! Three-o'clock!" Pfc Thael called out from his position on the right-side flank, followed by a brief, but intense gun battle that left a squad of Nek'var commandoes crumpled in the street with smoke curling up from glowing holes blasted into their armor.

Erik approached the group of fallen Nek'var soldiers cautiously, to get a better look at the monsters who'd terrorized his sleep. It was not a conscious act, but a sort of temporal compulsion that pushed his armored form across the street, like the hand of some unseen deity prodding him forward. He had to see...

They were big, massive creatures.

A black viscous fluid leaked in thick streams from the many, many wounds perforating their corpses. Idly, he nudged one with the toe of his armored boot, and it slowly turned over, still clutching the disrupter rifle's they favored in a scaley, three-pronged grip. This one was missing its helmet, apparently blasted right off its hideous, gray head. Sharp ridges jutted above its brow and traced down the creature's wide, angular jaw to a shockingly human-like mouth, sitting below four, dull, black faceted eyes staring from behind death's haze.

So you're the bogeyman everyone fears, he thought grimly.

They didn't appear all that threatening to him, lying there in a bloody heap. But alive and on their feet, they were a fearsome sight indeed. At over two meters tall and five-hundred kilos of clawed-killing-machine, supported by tree trunk sized legs, they were almost as big as an armored human.

They wore spikey, jade-colored armor that seemed designed more for striking fear into the heart of their enemies, than for actual protection, he decided after a cursory inspection of the pulse rifle holes punched into its glassy surface.

He turned his weapon over and ran his eyes over its massive frame.

Perhaps, these new pulse rifles, explicitly designed for use with the armored suits, and far too heavy for an unsuited human, were extremely effective against enemy armor. He suddenly had a greater appreciation for the eggheads who engineered these things. The Nek'var corpses hovering in the blurred background behind his rifle, suddenly snapped back into sharp focus.

How many humans have you bastards killed? He snarled silently, a searing hatred for the creatures burning in his chest. Thousands? Tens of thousands? You mother fuckers.

"Holy shit!" Ramirez cried out, clapping Erik on the shoulder, still high on adrenaline. He turned back toward the others, and repeated himself, louder this time, with the overzealous, adrenaline-fused bravado of someone who'd just survived a life and death encounter. "HOLY SHIIIIT! WHEW!"

"Simmer down, Ramirez," Specialist Ito snapped at him. "Don't want to hear your shit."

"What's yer problem, Ito?"

"Just shut the fuck up."

"You'd think the eggheads back at fleet would have something to counter the effects of adrenaline," Pfc Bracken muttered. "Can't stop shaking."

"I'm for that."

"Me too."

"I think Bracken pissed in his armor."

"Rivers, you asshole!"

"Yea, but it doesn't take a lot to get you shakin', Slacken Bracken," Private Cadwell cackled over the comm. "I heard you still sleep with a teddy bear."

"Enough, chatter," Gunnery Sergeant Moore snarled into the comm, cutting off Brackens retort. "Overwatch report."

"All clear, Gunny," came the digitized reply, and he signaled for them to form up and resume their march. "Tighten up, move out."

Similar scenes played out all across Ellis forward operating base.

Troop transports; hydraulic ramps; growling Sergeants who drove stun-shocked young recruits from their own troop transports with threats of retribution.

Some barely had a chance to get their boots on the ground before the ship's engines spooled back up and streaked for orbit, where a silent battle raged out beyond the planet's gravity well, far from the horrors of surface combat, out in the frozen depths of space.

From every human faction, united under the newly branded Alliance Fleet, warships engaged the colossal world-ships of the Nek'var Empire with a veritable wall of offense.

Energy particles from boulder-sized plasma bolts joined with turbo-laser fire powerful enough to vaporize a small town, to form a scintillating lattice of interlocked beams spanning the vast distances separating the opposing fleets.

Bolstering the fleet were the dreadnoughts. Immense capital ships haloed in shimmering energy shields that flared and rippled with energy dispersion as they shrugged off enemy attacks. The newest and deadliest ships in the fleet—plexium-hulled titans. Battleships bristling with the latest in electronic warfare, turbo-laser weaponry, and a complement of fast attack interceptors that secured space around them.

Supporting these monstrosities were the smaller, but equally impressive and far more maneuverable battlecruisers—large support ships with state of the art point defense and anti-ship missile batteries.

At the center of the fleet, were its carriers and their squadrons of sleek hypersonic starfighters who rolled and slipped in behind Nek'var bioraptors through a sea of anti-fighter flak bursts, that raked shards of shrapnel across millimeter thin hull plating in a steel-nerve rollercoaster duel of high-octane maneuvers.

The battle from the inside was a gut-wrenching panic of terror and resolve and desperation. And the jaw-clenching determination that not one Nek'var bio-raptor would get through their lines to the dropships shuttling troops to the surface—no matter the cost. A gauntlet of explosions and sizzling energy beams that sometimes skimmed their whirling starfighters so close it scorched the paint from their hulls. These pilots pushed themselves, and their starfighters, beyond engineering limits with the desperate skill, tenacity, and determination of someone fighting for their own life, and for the lives of everyone they've ever known, loved, served with, or grew up with.

Even while spiraling out of control after taking enemy fire, with their starfighter disintegrating around them, they dared to utilize their final weapon to strike a deadly blow to the enemy's heart. The doomed pilots rammed their stricken ships into enemy vessels in a last, glorious bloom of superheated gasses.

They fought with an unbridled ferocity that the battle-hardened Nek'var zealots had never seen before. They fought together, feared together, and died together in a bitter struggle to ensure Humanity's future.

A battle that raged far beyond the sensor capabilities of Erik's power armor. Spanning thousands of kilometers of empty space. Stretching from high lunar orbit to the distant planetoids, which spun within the moon's gravitational grasp.

Occasionally, wreckage from one of these orbital battles trailed fiery contrails across the sky. Remnants of this smoldering debris streaked down and blasted into a column of unarmored infantry grenadiers that Erik's platoon had just passed, engulfing them all in a searing inferno.

"JESUS CHRIST!" Someone screamed over the comm.

"MOVE, MOVE, MOVE!"

"Oh, fuck, oh shit!"

Erik's powered legs flashed madly beneath him, leaping over rubble, gunning down a Nek'var commando, and stomping past a soldier's disembodied face, which he stubbornly refused to recognize as human, lying next to a pile of burning debris in their mad dash through the deadly firestorm.

A sound like rolling thunder reverberated from a short distance away, and the boot-sole-shock of missile strikes vibrated beneath his feet.

Fast attack fighters screamed past overhead as Erik hurtled over a Nek'var Krezz rocket-system, the scarlet glow of their twin stardrives looping in evasive spirals before cutting up sharply into the stratosphere.

Rockets quaked the ground behind him, and disrupter bolts sizzled past his helmet. A few found their mark, slamming into his upper back, but his armor held, shattering the bolts into a thousand brilliant splinters.

He grunted with a sudden explosion of speed that sent him hurdling over a crumbling building with a tremendous powered leap, blasting molten holes in the armor of several Nek'var soldiers as he sailed past overhead, then tucked into a slick roll that had him up, on his feet, and in the ready position sending rounds downrange.

Private Stolley rolled up beside him and added his rifle to the mix.

Private Min, who had lost her entire family in the first Nek'var assault on MX-01, attacked with unmatched fury.

Memories of her mother, father, and younger siblings, three sisters and a brother, burned like a firebrand in her mind—all gone, in a blinding flash of light.

"Diiiiieee!" Private Min screamed, rolling to the right and blasting the remaining Nek'var soldiers off their feet. Erik glanced at Private Min, who stood in the street, chest heaving, glaring down at the corpses.

He counted twenty-six Nek'var soldiers riddling the ground.

"Remind me never to piss her off," he mumbled to Stolley, who was also eyeing Private Min with newfound respect.

"Agreed."

A moment later, the background rumble of battle was sliced by a piercing, electronic screech that red-lined his helmet's sound dampeners.

Automated anti-aircraft turrets swung to life, whirled, and tilted, all while unleashing a thundering torrent of turbo-laser bolts from glowing barrels. They tracked and transformed a squadron of inbound enemy raptors into expanding clouds of gas that smeared fiery ribbons across the sky.

A chorus of cheers went up from Erik's platoon, and rifles were raised in salute.

"Shaddup!" Yelled the Gunny. Who flashed the hand signal for possible enemy presence. "Focus, people. Remember, our radar struggles to pick them up."

Erik slowed as he approached a darkened intersection where storage depots crowded the streets and dropped into a tactical crouch, his rifle panning back and forth to cover both sides.

"Rocket!" Someone screamed into the comm, a split second before the world exploded in a boiling white light.

Squads of Nek'var commandoes surged from between two anti-matter silos and opened up on their position with plasma rockets and a hail of disrupter bolts.

Private Stolley was blown backward into Private Bracken, and they both flew several meters before touching the ground where they rolled and spun and skidded sparks across the pavement, finally crashing to a stop against a plexcrete barricade.

Private Min screamed wildly and stomped up beside Erik, dropping to a knee and hurling a nova-bomb at the attacking Nek'var. It erupted amidst them in a ground-quaking whump, that sent them rag-dolling away, helpless puppets.

Erik joined her, and together they did their bloody work.

A pair of Nek'var commandoes tried to flank them, but Erik had them locked in his holo-sights and, with grim satisfaction, watched as his pulse rounds ripped into their thighs and torso.

A disrupter bolt crashed into Erik's helmet, glancing off the angular impact plates but still snapped his head violently. Private Min put two searing holes in the offender's faceplate.

It ended as quickly as it began.

"All Clear!" Gunny called out.

Two full squads of Nek'var commandoes lay motionless in the street, oily streams of the black goo they called blood seeping from the smoking holes in their armor.

Private Min clapped Erik on the shoulder and jerked her helmet at the pile of corpses.

"Just think, Corporal," she said in a fierce voice. "You could be missing all of this fun back on Earth."

Erik was still pondering her words when a scream shattered his thoughts.

"MEDIC!" Came the chilling call over the comm, and Erik's heart dropped between his knees.

With two powered strides, he was next to the group of armored forms huddled around the crumpled figure being worked on by Doc.

"God damn it, they got him, Gunny, they fucking got him," Pfc Bracken wailed. A garbled jumble of voices all tried to talk over each other at once. "Those mother fuckers!"

"Shaddup!" Gunnery Sergeant Moore yelled into the comm. "Corporal Shields, I want eyes up there, NOW!"

Gunnery Sergeant Moore pointed to a tall plexsteel communications tower a few meters away.

"Roger that, Gunny," Erik replied through a shocked haze, directing an overwatch team to the location by marking it on their holos. "Timmons, Min, Stolley, overwatch, now—move your asses."

They bent their knees, swung their arms, and with a powered leap, ascended to the roof, where they quickly took up a position behind a thick plexcrete ledge.

"Overwatch, in position."

"Defensive formation!" Erik continued, waving frantically in his direction, and everyone moved at once. "Deploy tactical defense screens around Doc."

The remaining soldiers hustled forward and slammed black boxes onto the pavement and began working their control keys. They snapped open, extruded telescoping emitter rails then flared to life in a blue shimmer of energy.

"Hang in there, Cadwell," Doc said while administering stims and nanites and sealing the wound in the Private's stomach with a stabilizing foam. "Hang in there, man!"

Suddenly, the world was bathed in the boiling-white wrath of God.

All color was burned from the night, and a tremendous thunderclap shattered the heavens. Its reverberations echoed and rumbled like the planet was cracking open, releasing armageddon.

They all looked up in slack-jawed astonishment at a blinding-white mini-supernova expanding high in the cloudless sky. It blotted out the stars. Spawned an artificial sun.

The hazy shapes of two-mile-long capital ships vanished in a fireball of such intensity that Erik's HUD had to fully tint to prevent the searing white light from burning out his retinas.

Fiery contrails streaked ribbons through the strange half-light of the night. And everyone held their breath.

"Is it us?" A stunned Ramirez asked over the comm, his eyes wide as a meteor shower set the sky on fire.

"Gotta be them," a deep male voice responded.

"Can't tell who it is from here," a voice that Erik recognized as Private Min snarled into comm, "But, I hope those Nek'var bastards are burning."

"All of you idiots shut up!" Gunnery Sergeant Moore commanded, tilting his head as if listening to something only he could hear. "No more speculating."

Erik watched the burning wreckage streak through the sky with clinical, detached interest.

How many worlds had these bastards burned? How many lives had they cruelly snuffed? How many more before they are stopped?

Can they be stopped?